For the last year there has been a widening split within the ranks of American organized labor, and this split risks hardening as the new Change to Win (CTW) coalition increasingly takes on the complexion of a rival labor federation.
Thus far, the argument has focused on union organizing efforts and how unions should be structured. Yet, in many ways the split is without purpose because the AFL-CIO is already on the same page as the CTW coalition. This should surprise none since CTW leaders have been powerful members of the AFL-CIO’s Executive Council for the last decade, from where they have profoundly influenced Federation policy.
That begs the questions what are the real differences, and how would the CTW leadership have run the AFL-CIO differently had they been in charge. Perhaps more money would have been spent on Federation organizing efforts, Federation dues reduced further, individual union mergers accelerated, and more AFL-CIO programs closed. But these are second-order differences of judgment and disputes about managerial effectiveness, not differences of vision that warrant a split.
In many regards the split is simply the result of frustration at inability to reverse union decline. The tragedy is that the real issue remains out of focus on both sides (I’ll make no friends today). That issue is the significance of economic policy and politics in union strategy. It is an issue that does not warrant a split, but it does warrant prime time and could even provide the frame for a galvanizing debate that jump starts the entire union movement and changes national politics. This crucial debate can be framed as “sliced bread†versus “the boxâ€.
The sliced bread approach to strategy comes out of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is a major force within the CTW coalition. Late last year (2005) SEIU launched a greatest idea since sliced bread competition that asked ordinary Americans what they thought were the most critically needed policy initiatives. The goal was to launch an unprecedented national conversation about how to strengthen the economy and improve life for working men and women and their families.
The sliced bread competition was jazzy and attention grabbing, reflecting the imaginative and innovative characteristics that distinguish SEIU. But sliced bread was much more than a one-time competition. It was also a statement about where unions should be headed. From the sliced bread perspective unions must find those economic initiatives that people want, are important, and doable. The challenge is to work within the existing system, and find a new place for unions.
Such a view leads to talk of “partnering with our employers†and of unions taking over and organizing outsourcing. When it comes to globalization, there is no going back and unions must adapt innovatively to the new environment. The critical feature is that the core parameters of the economic system are given, and unions have to live and work within those parameters. Only later, after unions have rebuilt them selves, can these parameters be re-visited and changed.
The CTW sliced bread framework contrasts with the box, which is an entirely different framework that has gradually emerged at the AFL-CIO – and whose political implications are still being digested. The box depicts workers as boxed in on all sides by the new economic order. Imagine a square whose sides are labeled globalization (west), less than full employment (north), privatization and small government (east), and labor market flexibility (south). Private sector workers are pressured by globalization, which allows corporations to put them in international competition with oppressed low-wage workers. Public sector workers are pressured by privatization that places them in competition with private sector workers.
Both groups are pressed from north and south by less than full employment and labor market flexibility. Less than full employment is where the Federal Reserve enters since it puts a floor to unemployment in the name of price stability. Labor market flexibility strips workers of employment protections and unemployment insurance, degrades the minimum wage, and makes union organizing near impossible.
A box perspective leads to radically different conclusions. The current system has unions running just to stay in place. As quickly as they organize new workers, companies ship existing union jobs offshore. Manufacturing was first to feel this, but in future many parts of the service sector also will. From a box perspective, the problem is systemic and the challenge is to change the system – not to adapt to it.
Right now, corporations have workers boxed in. The challenge is to reverse the situation and put CEOs and corporations in the box, as did the institutional innovations of the New Deal. That task is easier said than done. Not only must the economics of corporate globalization be discredited, but new affirmative arguments for an alternative must also be put forward. Scorekeeping the failure of today’s global economy is part of the job, but only part. Unions must also provide a compelling alternative to free market rhetoric and ideology, a task that has barely begun.
The CTW sliced bread and AFL-CIO box perspectives imply radically different road maps. The former grudgingly accepts today’s economic structure. Consequently, the policies that determine the structure of the economy and the economic ideas that drive these policies are not the key issue. Instead, organizing is, and the belief is that organizing can be successful regardless of structure. Moreover, since ideas and policy are not on the critical path, unions can even reduce engagement with Washington and party politics.
In stark contrast, the AFL-CIO box demands immediate system change, and that in turn requires new economic arguments that can change policy and politics. Organizing cannot succeed without this change because it is the structure of economic arrangements that is tearing the heart out of unions. Changing the economic policies that shape the economic structure is therefore squarely on the critical path. At the political level, it forces a profound intellectual break with the current Democratic Party elite because Rubinomics (the economics of the Clinton administration) is the box! This is a dramatically different political strategy from reduced political engagement.
Where next? First, as of the moment the split looks to be festering. This is a tragedy. A head-to-head debate on these issues is needed, not a split within organized labor. Second, for the AFL-CIO the challenge is to break with the Democratic Party elite without splitting the party as that could hand victory to Republicans whose version of the box is even more extreme. In effect, the AFL-CIO is dealing with an economic box within a political box.
Interesting argument. Hope you will read my book on this in October
I think you’re blowing up the difference between the two way out of proportion.
Andy, I look forward to your book.
Anon, if the difference is so small, what is your explanation for the split?
Thanks, Tom
Tom,
1. How does the professional (who would not be unionizable???) play into all of this? The purpose for us is to help unions by helping to put (wage) pressures on businesses.
2. The dwindling of the middle class needs to reverse so that this tremendous economy can continue to prosper. Else, at some point there may be very few of us left that can afford to buy things. Or so it appears.
John, great question. I think the worker – professionals division is a social construction that needs to be tackled and done away with. When I was a professor I always referred to myself as a “worker in the education industry, ” though my colleagues thought of themselves as professionals. Professors need powerful unions instead of tenure, which would greatly improve the academy for all. I think that same sentiment applies for professionals in general. Tom
The two philosophies you describe need not be an either/or proposition. Why not pursue both strategies?
The value of organizing more workers, beyond improvements to their individual work situations, is that more voters are brought into contact with the alternative policy narrative of the union movement. Moreover, the newly unionized may be more passionate in their commitment to economic justice than are long-standing union members, some of whom have allowed themselves to become so distracted by “cultural” issues that they end up voting against their own essential interests.
The larger numbers of passionately engaged union workers can then add political force in support of economic policy reform, which is desperately needed.
I agree that the leadership of the Democratic Party seems to be only slightly less enamored of free-market globalization than their Republican counterparts. This is unfortunate, since globalization not only fails to achieve equitable distribution, but also
leads in exactly the wrong direction with respect to the sustainability crisis.
They split because CTW wants to reorganize by industrial sectors as fast as possible and the AFLCIO is a loose federation whose member unions are comfortable with the existing hierarchy structures (whose leaders may lose their fat salaried positions if there is change).
And they say they want to pump a little more money into union organizing (vs. politicla organizing and other things). However, this is the part that is way overblown by Thomas Palley.
Firstly, as David says, union organizing is probably the most important form of political organizing. Union members are more likely to vote Democratic and more likely to be informed on economic issues and globalization.
Secondly, CTW still gives lots of money to political campaigns (both electoral and issue based) and still has public sector unions that depend on political campaigns for their legal right to organize. For example, SEIU gave boatloads of money (millions) to electoral campaigns in 2004.
Finally, CTW and AFLCIO are not really split at the local council/federation level. They are still working together and what not.
Now get up and organize. It’s not rocket science.
tom
i see a box tilt in your story
may i suggest the two sides are not both right but both wrong
example
once u know rubinomics IS the box
don’t you need to say
the party system is a two headed dog
two heads with one corporate donor heart
that may have two moods
but never two minds about domestic wagery
how can you imagine the donk head ever surviving
on its own
so a prog split is a big yes
build a new klass based movement yes
to exit the shrinking prole box
crash out of it
forget trying to influence the donkeys
unions are rubes
the party takes their money and org time
sez thanx
and as you so nicely point out
listens to klass enemy
wall street bobby rubin again and again and again
Tom-
You described clearly the economic views of the two federations as I see them, also. The AFL-CIO talks about the neoliberal box as something that needs to be changed, but to be frank there is no concensus or even begining discussion that I know of as to how to do that or what to replace it with (although Trumka and others are working on something). CTW talks about organizing workers who can’t be be outsourced or digitized, are more conciliatory towards a new bracero/guest worker program, talk about a bipartisan relationship with the Republican Party, ceded most political issues to the Republicans and Democrats by not attempting to build a federation structure to replace or strengthen the AFL-CIOs political capacity on issues, and critisize others for being stuck in 1930s “class war” trade unionism.
So many ironies, but just for starters:
1. There are no “class war” unions in the US today, if there ever were. The Machinists (IAM) for example, who were cast during the split as the trogladite polar opposite of the SEIU (old cigar-chomping white guys vs young modern diverse crew of SEIU and UNITE-HERE), have a long history of reaching out to “high-road” companies who want to cooperate with unions to mutual benefit–there just aren’t many takers around, certainly not in manufacturing. Maybe SEIU will find more likely suspects in parts of the economy that can’t be moved to China.
2. The SEIU can be as ruthless as any union in trying to squeeze bargainig rights out of a company (to their credit).
So its worth looking at what unions actually do, rather than what their leaders say. The real world has its way.
The original and best point raised by SEIU, in my opinion, was their focus on targeted organizing to build industrial and sectoral strength. But that seems to have gone by the boards in favor of building the CTW. The Teamsters and UFCW remain, as far as I can see, general unions of the type that Stern and other critisized the CWA and others for being. So what was the point of the split?
At the recent Global Unions conference in New York city, union leaders from around the world implied very different visions and tasks in the plenary session–although they all shared common ground on the need for bargaining and organizing across borders against the multinationals.
Trumka gave a speech that talked about not just breaking out of the neo-liberal box, but “smashing it”. Bertha Lujon who works for the Mayor of Mexico City (of the PRD) and was formerly a leader of the Mexican independent union the FAT, argued that we needed to look specifically at the alternatives to neo-liberalism that are developing in South America, from Lula and the PT in Brazil to Chavez in Venezuela. The speaker from South Africa took it another step and said “I’ll give it a name, socialism.” This discussion did not get furthered in the conference as far as I know, since workshops were more focused on specific projects. But the tension was there.
You can’t say that either federation has a consolidated view on anything. The AFL-CIO unions of course have their own views (or no views at all) of “the box” and “sliced bread” as you call it. And the CTW unions seem to have no more discipline than the AFL-CIO, even on the point of sectoral organizing, except for their shared committment to organizing.
Finally, an earlier comment mentioned that that AFL-CIO and CTW still work together at the local level. Sadly, after all the work so many State Federations and Central Labor Councils and local leaders to piece the state and local movements back together with teh Solidarity Charter agreement, we have just received a letter from Ana Berger of CTW informing us that she is urging all CTW locals to cease paying dues to all CLCs and State Federations (again) if the Farmworkers can’t also join under the same terms under which the 5 original CTW unions participate. (The National Education Association is being allowed to participate also, but under very different terms that involve paying additional fees to the national AFL-CIO as proposed originally to all the CTW unions by the AFL-CIO.
I can’t tell you how discouraging this is to Council leaders. Are we worth anything to the CTW leaders other than as a stick to beat Sweeney with? Does all the compromising have to be done by Sweeney? There are national elections this year that necessitates us working together at the local and state level, where legal restrictions on who we can call or mail to, etc., using union funds, are very strict. Hopefully sanity will return before the deadline to split the CLCs and State Feds again arrives. Berger and CTW have told all CTW locals to withdraw by May if an agreement is not reached.
–Jeff Crosby, President, North Shore Labor Council